an opinionated sports blog

September 14, 2007

Yesterday, on the same day that the punishment for the Patriots camera-gate was announced, the governing body of Formula One racing, the FIA, announced the McLaren team is in VERY deep. If you thought the fines that Bill Belichick got ($500,000 announced yesterday) or that Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has piled up were big money deals, you should be sufficiently blown away to hear what McLaren-Mercedes is forking over.

$100,000,000.

That’s a lot of money. And to make matters worse, the team is also being stripped of all its constructor’s title points, which is quite the amount considering their two drivers, Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso are 1-2 in the driver’s points rankings. It’s actually been estimated that the team will lose another $100 million in income due to that decision as well. All of this happened because the team was found to have plans from their rival, Ferrari. Now that is some heavy fine-age for spying; the NFL should’ve stepped it up to that level and Belichick should thank his lucky stars he chose to get into football instead of F-1 and instituting his cheating ways.